


Going Home

by DiazTuna



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff kind of??, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 19:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13794177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiazTuna/pseuds/DiazTuna
Summary: Regina, Emma and Henry stop by a diner on their way back to Storybrooke, all wishing for the same thing.





	Going Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short one-shot meant kick me in the butt and finish a chapter for a long-fic already. I wanted it to be fluff but this came out instead. So, yeah!

The bell jingles as she opens the door. It’s Saturday night, perhaps. Regina has lost track of time in that way that comes with smiling too much and for too long. It’s a diner in the middle of the highway, the last stop before reaching Storybrooke and the thought should not be making her lips press together. Home, they’re going home.

 

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna turn up your nose at this joint?” Emma teases her. “I saw you eat a hot dog…”

 

“Out of a cart, too.” Henry adds in placing a hand on her shoulder. He is getting taller and taller in a way she doesn’t entirely like. “I saw it, I was there.”

 

She knows what they expect, how to curve any suspicion. Regina rolls her eyes and clears her throat.

 

“That was purely for the experience. This, however,” She gestures at the flashing lights of the arcade games and worn claw machine. “Is something I cannot name.”

 

“Geesh, I can’t take you anywhere.” Emma says, laughing at the end of her words. As if she were testing them, testing what they would sound like. Maybe Regina just wishes she were.

 

“I’m staaaaarving.” Henry announces as he steps ahead of them to settle in one of the many empty booths.

 

“He’ll eat me out of a house.” Regina shakes her head as she watches him open a menu.

 

“You and me both,” Emma laughs with a slight snort to it. “You know, Snow found him eating her chocolate whipped cream with tortilla chips the other night.”

 

“No..”She replies horrified.

 

“I blame hormones.”

 

“I blame _you._ ” Regina nudges her before she walks towards the booth. She slides into it, the faux-leather of the seat sticks to her skin but she will not grimace. She will not.

 

“That’s really uncalled for.” Emma exclaims sliding in, her bare shoulder grazing hers.

 

“What is?” Henry asks eyeing the menu with more determination than it requires.

 

“Your mom being unfair to me.”

 

“Ah.” He says with a vague disinterest that makes Emma glare which he misses entirely. Regina has to keep herself together. Has to keep herself from making wishes in moments of happiness.

 

The waitress comes and goes with their orders. Three burgers, swiss cheese in two of them. Pickles on the side and just like that they are twenty minutes closer to leaving. Regina glances at Emma’s hands held together at the table, her skin tanned up to where the eye can see. A week of Sun and heat. She doesn’t have to look to know her shoulders and nose have freckled in a way Storybrooke has never allowed. That had been the point of this week, to catch all the sunlight they’d been missing.

 

_“How about we just go?” Emma had said on a Friday night as she helped clear the table. Regina had felt her heart stop then._

 

_“Go where?” Regina had drunk what was left of her wine and pushed the kitchen door open trying to hide._

 

_“Just...away.” She’d followed and there had been no smile on her face. “For a week? I don’t know.”_

 

_The wine had burned bitter in her mouth and she’d looked at Emma’s reflection on the darkened glass of her window as she began washing. Regina had known what that expression on her face had meant. So much, too much had happened. The men they had believed they loved dead and gone in the blink of an eye. Dark curses willingly taken for the other and wounds that had yet to close. Snow’s new child and envy they shouldn’t be feeling. Every day being too much and being just like the last._

 

_“All right.”_

 

_“Really?” Emma’s eyes had shone even on the glass._

 

_“Yes, really.” And that had been their first smile of the week._

 

Regina lies back on the booth and closes her eyes, savoring each second that is over too quick. She feels that good ache in her legs, the kind that comes from having walked for far too long. The coolness of the diner’s air conditioner runs over her but unable to go between the spot where her knee touches Emma. Home, they are going home. She has to remember that.

 

“Here we go,” The waitress makes her eyes snap open. Even the sound of glass and cutlery hitting the wood of the table deserves to be treasured. “I’ll be right back with your extra fries.”

 

“Who ordered those?” Regina raises her brow watching her son raise his hands to proclaim his innocence and feeling Emma shrugging against her.

 

“Compliments of the house,” The waitress tells her. “Or well, cook likes to experiment with spices sometimes. As a rule we don’t charge nice looking families for his experiments.”

 

“I…” Regina begins feeling that something in there should be argued against, but none of those words are wrong. “Thank you.”

 

She nods gently before leaving.

 

“Nice of you to wait for your moms, kid.” Emma says snorting at the sight of Henry with burger sauce smeared on his lips.

 

His eyes pinch shut and his full cheeks struggle not stretch into a smile. He looks happy, he _is_ happy. Regina remembers when she thought this impossible, remembers she’d already been reminded of it this week.

 

_“Moms, just LOOK at this place. It goes on FOREVER!” His hands had gone to his head looking at the rows and rows of books._

 

_An old opera house converted into a bookstore, it smelled like old paper and coffee. The chandelier still hung from the ceiling and the gold details still adorned the private boxes. The carpet a deep red and the sound of a cello bounced off the walls. It’d been like a spell, a first for them all, the shared wonder. Nothing that could be held over a town line or in an enchanted forest.  He’d practically sprinted towards the stage in search of something that caught his eye and her breath had caught taking it all in._

 

_“You OK?” Emma had asked with a tentative touch on her elbow._

 

_“Yes, it’s just so…” She’d gazed at her and known the words she’d wanted to say. “I could have never imagined a place like this.”_

 

_“To be fair, wouldn’t be much of a curse if things like this made their across the town line.” Emma had said ducking her head as if it had been harmless. “Pretty neat, huh?”_

 

_Regina had felt a rare sort of happiness beginning to take root. It’d been the sight of Emma pretending to cave in to the weight of half of Henry’s book at the cashier that had reminded her she loves her. Something had blossomed then._

 

“Hey mom,” He says bringing her back to the now that is almost over. “Think we could this more?”

 

“Fighting ogres and dragons gets old pretty quickly, I know.” Emma teases him and he rolls his eyes in a way that’s all her.

 

“No, I mean like…” He sighs heavily and Regina fears he might be overthinking it.

 

“She knows exactly what you mean sweetheart, she’s just being purposefully dense.”

 

Emma shifts in her seat and the air around suddenly feels heavier, despite a well placed chuckle.

 

“Hey, kid,” Her hands are back on the table. “Course we can.” It sounds like a lie to Regina’s ears. Or rather that it’s something Emma has no faith in happening, like she’s promising him shooting stars every night.

 

He nods and Regina knows her son well enough to know when he is pretending. All she can think of of the happiness that had spread through his face just moments ago. She doesn’t like how the present keeps mutating into the future. Home, they are going home.

 

“Got any quarters?” Henry asks with an attempt at a bright smile. “There’s a stuffed sheep in the claw machine I want to win for Gramps.”

 

“That seems to be right up David’s alley.” Regina rummages her purse for change as Emma does the same with her pockets.

 

“Be sure you win the pony for your mom.” Emma tells him handing him more coins than she should have been carrying.

 

He shakes his head, his go-to response to having witnessed his mother winking at him.

 

“Wanna get dessert? Think they have apple pie,” She asks Regina as Henry reaches the machines. “You get to complain the whole time about how it isn’t as good as yours?”

 

Regina laughs in a way that is entirely accidental with fondness she is careful to seldom reveal. “If that’ll make you happy.”

 

“Always.” It barely comes out in a breath, like she’s on the verge of something.

 

She says nothing until the pie arrives. Too hot and the ice cream is already souping on the plate. But it’s sweet and indulgent and Regina can’t bring herself to truly hate it.

 

“They didn’t use enough butter in the crust.” She says wiping her mouth with a napkin.

 

“Is that the best you can do?” Emma takes a large spoonful off their plate. “Come on.” Her mouth is full and Regina feels her chest rise with want.

 

“Too much cinnamon.” She turns to look at Emma and finds her surprised that she did. Caught in the act of hiding something. “Is that better?”

 

Emma splits another piece but stops short of picking it up, she pushes around the plate and Regina watches her. Waits.

 

“I don’t want this to be over.”  She mumbles and Regina feels how many beats her heart skips. “I..I”

 

_I want this over and done with it’s what she’d thought at the steepest point of the wooden roller coaster over the water. Henry had been sitting just in front of them, raising his arms and cheering. Regina had bitten into her lip and tightened her grip on the safety bar, ready to close her eyes but  Emma had taken her hand. Sure and gentle, and Regina could no longer close her eyes. I don’t want this to be over, had been her only thought then. I don’t want this to be over._

 

“It doesn’t have to be.” Regina whispers steadying her hand with hers.

 

“What…?” It’s the chill she feels on Emma’s skin that has turning her gaze on her again. Locking fingers with her. “Regina…”

 

Emma searches her face for an explanation, for meaning because she has never been one to wish aloud. Regina knows, remembers her confession about a wish all those years ago. Her eyes had looked the same then, her smile is different now. More uncertain, somehow. Regina turns their hands over and kisses her wrist. She can barely register the dark of her eyes widening before Emma’s  lips are on hers. Warm, soft and suddenly sure of themselves.

 

“You’re right.” She tells out of breath and her pressing her forehead against hers.

 

“About what?” Regina laughs still lost.

 

“Too much cinnamon.”

 

It’s perhaps Saturday night and she’s still smiling too much and for too long. It will all still exist crossing the town line, even if she could have never imagined it. Home, they’re going home.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The place they went to is a version of New York that turned into Buenos Aires at one point, idk?


End file.
